A Chilean Ex-Soldier Guiltily Recalls His Unit’s Atrocities

Source: New York Times

A Chilean Ex-Soldier Guiltily Recalls His Unit’s Atrocities

By PASCALE BONNEFOY
FEB. 28, 2016


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Guillermo Padilla served in a commando unit that spent months combing towns and remote outposts in southern Chile in 1973,
searching for suspected opponents of the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Credit Victor Ruiz Caballero for The
New York Times
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SANTIAGO, Chile — The scene has haunted Guillermo Padilla for over 40 years.

As an 18-year-old soldier in the Chilean Army in 1973, Mr. Padilla was on patrol with his unit in a southern city when the owner of a supermarket turned in his own son, accusing him of supplying munitions and food to a guerrilla group. The soldiers threw the young man into a well and began shooting at him. Then they dragged out his bloody, bullet-riddled body, put it in a military truck and drove off. Mr. Padilla was watching from a nearby jeep.

“I never knew where he was taken, and not even his name,” he said. “The whole experience in the army made me mature quickly. I became a soldier at 18, and after everything I saw, by 21 I had become a different person.”

Mr. Padilla was part of a commando unit that spent months combing towns and remote outposts in southern Chile in late 1973, searching for suspected opponents of the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and for weapons. The unit raided homes, arrested and tortured suspects, and killed at least 30 people, he said.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/world/americas/a-chilean-ex-soldier-guiltily-recalls-his-units-atrocities.html?_r=0